Tangier tango

Villa Mabrouka, Tangier

GETAWAYS • Morocco

“Tangier is more New York than New York,” Paul Bowles wrote in his 1952 novel Let it Come Down.

The best time to visit the Moroccan port city of Tangier is in the fall — and the best hotel there is Villa Mabrouka, which opened last year.

Just above the Kasbah and the Medina, and with breathtaking views of the Strait of Gibraltar and the North Atlantic Sea, Villa Mabrouka is an intimate, 12-room hotel housed in a 1940s modernist building on a 12-acre hillside. The property was once the holiday home of Yves Saint Laurent and Pierre Bergé, and was transformed into a hotel by British designer Jasper Conran in 2019. Its unveiling was stalled by the pandemic, with a soft opening only last year. But now the kinks are all worked out, creating an unmatched luxury hotel experience, without ritzy affectation.

The design of Villa Mabrouka reflects a blend of modernist architecture and traditional English country house aesthetics, with elements like floor-to-ceiling glass windows, intricate fretwork, and antique furnishings. The gardens, by landscape architect Madison Cox, feature cascading terraces, with over 6500 trees, shrubs, and flowers, including banana palms, ferns, bamboo, citrus trees, hollyhocks, nasturtiums, roses, bougainvillea, and agapanthus. A variety of bird songs and the five-times-a-day calls to prayer from the mosque next door add to the Tangier experience.

The villa features two crystalline swimming pools, three restaurants, and a rooftop coffee and cocktail bar. The dining options emphasize local Mediterranean ingredients, with dishes like grilled lobster, sauteed sole, and tagines (lamb, beef or chicken).

Delta has a two-stop flight that takes 15 hours to reach the destination, but most flights are much longer. The best option is to spend a few days in Paris or London and then fly directly to Tangier — a 2.5-hour flight.

To prepare for your trip, read Bowles's classic novel The Sheltering Sky, which will put you in the mood for this storied North African city. –Brad Inman

→ Villa Mabrouka (Tangier) • 1 Sidi Bouknadel.